“EVERY ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING. YOUR LUCKY NUMBER IS NONE. YOUR LUCKY COLOUR IS DEAD. Motto: LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.”

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.”

“At the end of the street was a large glass box with a female mannequin inside it, dressed as a gypsy fortune teller.“Now,” said Wednesday, “at the start of any quest or enterprise it behooves us to consult the Norns.”He dropped a coin into the slot. With jagged, mechanical motions, the gypsy lifted her arm and lowered it once more. A slip of paper chunked out of the slot.Wednesday took it, read it, grunted, folded it up and put it in his pocket.“Aren’t you going to show it to me? I’ll show you mine,” said Shadow.“A man’s fortune is his own affair,” said Wednesday, stiffly. “I would not ask to see yours.”Shadow put his own coin into the slot. He took his slip of paper. He read it.EVERY ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING.YOUR LUCKY NUMBER IS NONE.YOUR LUCKY COLOUR IS DEAD. Motto:LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.Shadow made a face. He folded the fortune up and put it inside his pocket.”

“America used to live by the motto "Father Knows Best." Now we're lucky if "Father Knows He Has Children." We've become a nation of sperm donors and baby daddies.”

“It's just lucky for Father he never had any sons. He might have been forced to respect them.”

“Words like lucky and advantages we knew, even at our young age, were upscale euphemisms for not poor, not the son of a drunk and, later, not the son of a suicidal mother.”